This is a research project conducted by University of Pittsburgh. The purpose of this research is to understand how people in the United States come in contact with each other day-to-day, and how this may affect flu transmission. This web survey is a part of the SMART in Schools collaborative study with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The survey collects some information about your contacts from yesterday, and this information helps build a model of your social network. This research is funded by the CDC.

Though we know a lot about how the flu spreads, and we know transmission is related to social networks, we still don't know what the best practice prevention methods are (such as school closures). The information about your contacts can help us understand how people interact with each other, and therefore inform behavioral interventions to prevent flu transmission.

Anyone in the United States. We are collecting information from everyone in the US interested in helping us. If you are not in the United States but are interested in participating, please follow this link to a similar, and international, study.

Once you agree to participate, we will ask you a few questions about yourself, your location, your household structure, your day yesterday, and the people that you saw. We will also record your geolocation (only as specific as city, state) so we can see where people are participating. Our survey will take 15-45 minutes to fill out. You will also be able to create a username so you can return and complete our survey again (You may participate as often as once each day and can win a gift card once a week). Your participation is voluntary and you may withdraw at any time by exiting the window.

If you decide you don't want to complete the survey, just exit out of the window. Your data will not be tranferred to our database until you complete the survey.

Only our study team will have access to the data collected from this survey. The data will not include any names entered or any information that can link the data back to you. Your data will be combined with everyone else's data and analyzed in aggregate.

The only risk of our study is a potential breach of confidentiality. To prevent this, the hosting website and database will be behind the University of Pittsburgh firewall. All data transferred from website to database will be encrypted and picked up using secure file to transfer (sftp).

You can click here to see more information or contact the study team.

If you would like to continue to our survey, please check "I Agree"

I agree

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